W. Oh! you are there again with your substance! I must own you have an ingenious way about you, and, if you succeed in making me see how this circumstance removes the objection, as it did the first, I give it up.
D. But it does remove it. And let me tell you that you Protestants, in fighting against the dogmas of the Catholic Church, commit two very serious faults: First, you do not provide yourselves with philosophy enough to cope with her. Secondly, you do not sound the depth of her statement. Then it generally happens that, when you think you are proposing your strongest objections, and you are very sure you have her in a corner, you are merely combating a phantom of your own imagination.
Now, let us see if the substance of the body of Christ can be in different places at the same time. To do this, we must examine the other question, How can a simple being reside in space? Metaphysicians teach that a body may reside in space in two ways, according as it is considered either in its phenomenal representation or in its real objective nature and substance. In its phenomenal representation, a body resides in space by contact of extension; in its real objective nature and substance, by acting upon it. I lay my hand flat upon the surface of a table, and suppose I consider both my hand and the table in their phenomenal extension. Under this respect, all the points and parts which form the phenomenal extension of my hand come in contact with all the respective parts of the table which my hand is able to cover.[92] Under this respect, a body naturally cannot be in different places at the same time without a contradiction, because the supposition would imply that the parts of my hand which are in contact with the respective parts of the table are also in contact with parts of other bodies at any given distance.
But if we consider a body not in its phenomenal extension, but in its real objective nature and substance, the case is different; because, as we have seen, the body as to its substance is simple and unextended, and therefore, as such, it cannot reside in space by contact of extension, inasmuch as its parts touch the phenomenal parts of space; for it has no parts which may touch. Hence it follows that it resides in space as every other simple being, that is, by acting upon it.[93] In this case, a body in its substance and objective nature does not reside in space except by its action upon it.
Now, naturally, a body in its objective nature and substance is limited in its action to a certain defined space, and cannot extend its action beyond it. But there is no possible contradiction in supposing that a body may be endowed by the infinite with the power and energy to act upon any indeterminate amount of space at the same time.
Now, with regard to the body of our Lord, we have seen that it is in the holy Eucharist in its objective state, and consequently is there by its real action. The miracle in this case is, that the infinite power of the Word to which it is hypostatically united intensifies its natural sphere of acting upon space, and makes it extend to thousands of places at the same time. To conclude: The question, Can the body of Christ be in different places at the same time? resolves itself into this other: Can the substance of the body of Christ act really and truly in different places at the same time? Who could give a reason worth anything to show that it cannot? Who could prove any contradiction in the
supposition? There would be a contradiction in saying that the phenomenal dimensions of the body of Christ, at the same time that they touch the dimensions of one definite space, touch also the dimensions of numberless other spaces. But there is no contradiction in saying that the substance of the body of Christ can act by virtue of the Word, to whom it is united, in numberless places at one and the same instant.
The completion of the theory of the cosmos in time and space will be given in the next article.
[84] Council of Trent.
[85] “Quos prescivit et predestinavit conformes fieri imagini filii sui, ut ipse sit primogenitus in multis fratibus.” Rom. viii. 29.